It tells of the human cost of the disappearance of a young man, and the wife and son left behind. The events of the play take place in 1981, 10 years later, when his body finally surfaces.

It’s a big play: there are 21 speaking characters, plus a live baby, a goose and a rabbit; its three acts run to well over three hours. This sense of overflowing dramatic richness is perfect for Broadway, where bigger is usually better. But the production’s epic sense of scale, with Rob Howell’s looming domestic kitchen interior filling the stage, is offset by the intimacy and detail of the performances.

Eleven of the original London cast reprise their work here, including Laura Donnelly (whose own family history inspired Butterworth to write the play) as the woman left in limbo by her husband’s vanishing; Paddy Considine as the patriarch who takes her into his family, and Genevieve O’Reilly as his wife, also return.

Newcomers include superb turns from Fionnula Flanagan as an elderly and intermittently lucid aunt, and Justin Edwards, as a displaced Englishman, who has also been adopted into the family.

We need your help…

When you subscribe to The Stage, you’re investing in our journalism. And our journalism is invested in supporting theatre and the performing arts.

The Stage is a family business, operated by the same family since we were founded in 1880. We do not receive government funding. We are not owned by a large corporation. Our editorial is not dictated by ticket sales.

We are fully independent, but this means we rely on revenue from readers to survive.

Help us continue to report on great work across the UK, champion new talent and keep up our investigative journalism that holds the powerful to account. Your subscription helps ensure our journalism can continue.